Many businesses maintain networks that are connected to much wider networks, of which they have limited knowledge. As one representative example, many service providers utilize telecommunication, computer, or other networks in delivering services to customers. The ability to abstract the network into a database, simulate traffic flows through the network, and analyze many aspects of the network's operation, allows service providers to optimize existing networks, plan for future growth, and increase reliability by simulating network failures. The ability to accurately simulate traffic and analyze a network is limited by the information available about actual network facilities (e.g., nodes such as routers and switches, and links such as telecommunication channels). In particular, modeling data flows from a source or to a destination that is not within the service provider's administered network is difficult, since traditional point-to-point (i.e., source-to-destination) analysis is impossible due to the inability to know what off-network facilities the traffic flow is routed through, much less the characteristics and capacities of the off-network facilities.
However, the need remains for service providers and other network administrators to be able to perform high fidelity simulations of real-world traffic, to accurately plan and provision the facilities within their administered network.